Still, it would look as if good was to come of this little incident, for within a week Mr. Howlitt said to Larry:
“How would you like a day off, eh, Larry? You have been a faithful boy, and to-morrow I am going to Middletown to look over the market, so that you may go, too, by driving Old Jerry over with a load of truck. I am owing you a little money, and if you want to it will be a good time for you to get a suit of clothes. I do not know how the minx knows it, but Lucy thinks you would like to go to Gainsboro on the Fourth.”
Larry wondered if his blushes showed through his coat of tan, as he stammered his reply.
Larry’s enjoyment of that trip to Middletown was doubled when he found that Lucy was to accompany her father. He received another pleasant surprise when Mr. Howlitt placed ten dollars in two new, crisp bills, in his hands as soon as the load of farm products had been sold.
“Do with it as you wish, lad,” he said, and Larry lost no time in hastening to a ready-made clothing store, where he bought a new suit of clothes, and even shoes and underwear. It took all of his money, and the outfit was a plain one, but serviceable, and it is safe to say that Larry will never buy another which will give him half the pleasure of that one.
On his way home, and he started some time ahead of Mr. Howlitt and Lucy, as Old Jerry was a slow horse under ordinary circumstances, he could think of nothing else. Time and again he took up the bundle to examine it from the outside, and then tossed it back into the bottom of the wagon, saying over to himself:
“It is mine!”
Finally the idea entered his busy brain that it would be a fine thing to appear at home in his new suit. Why not put it on now? He was riding along a road where there was no house for a long distance, and he would risk meeting a team. Accordingly, almost before he realized what he was doing, he had stripped off his old coat, and never thinking in his wild exuberance of spirits that he might ever need to wear it again, flung it as far as he could into the bushes, crying out:
“Lay there, old coat, and may you rest in peace!”
Casting hasty glances up and down the road to see that no team was in sight, he sent one after another of his remaining garments into the bushes, until he stood in the wagon as unclothed as at the time of his birth!